Deutero-Isaiah

And so...

Deutero-Isaiah.

Isaiah, the original book of Isaiah, was probably at absolute most Isaiah 1 through 39.

40 through 55, added later, despite what Dan Ellsworth may think about the

By no means are all the prophets in the Old Testament set out there, right? So you have quite a few, you know, prophetic books there, Jeremiah, Isaiah...

And within Isaiah, you have Proto-Isaiah, Deutero-Isaiah, and Trito-Isaiah.

So you have three different authors writing at different periods.

Proto-Isaiah, way before the exile.

Deutero-Isaiah, a little before, during, and after the exile.

Jeremiah, during and after the exile.

Ezekiel, you get the point.

So if anybody had any doubts, you know, that these prophets were prophetic, We have literary means of determining when and exegetical means of determining when a prophecy was written.

But, you know, in recent centuries, some scholars noticed that there are some differences in different parts of the book, and they began to propose that more than one individual contributed to Isaiah.

They proposed that basically the first 39 chapters of Isaiah were written by the prophet who lived in the 8th century BC by the historical Isaiah, and then sometime later, after the Babylonian exile, another prophet came along and wrote the second part of Isaiah, or what came to be called Deutero-Isaiah.

Deutero means second.

And so he wrote the chapters after chapter 39.

In light of these issues, O'Brien proposes alternative interpretations of the prophets aimed at promoting justice.

The chapters delve into the significance of Amos and Micah for modern economic ethics, the themes of inclusivity and exclusivity in Isaiah, the potential for understanding Jeremiah as a communal voice rather than an individual one, and the limitations of Second Isaiah's creation theology in addressing the climate crisis.

Julia O'Brien is Professor Emerita of Biblical Studies and the former Paul H. and Grace L. Stern Chair in Old Testament Studies at Lancaster Theological Seminary.

Julia, it is an honor to be in dialogue with you today.

Even since I wrote this book, the acceleration of climate catastrophe w- is, was beyond, this is beyond my imagination.

I was just looking at The New York Times this morning at the projections for the next several years with the El Niño because of global warming, with the, th-the starvation that will be faced within the next three years is, around the world, is staggering.

So what I tried to do was to put that into conversation with Second Isaiah, and by that I mean the second half of Isaiah, chapters forty particularly through fifty-four, which is the way I named that.

And there are beautiful passages in Isaiah that talk about God as creator and how beautiful the Earth is.

Friends, our first reading for this weekend is taken from that wonderful middle section of the Prophet Isaiah.

I think I told you before, Isaiah is divided by the scholars into three sections: one through thirty-nine, they call it Proto or First Isaiah, and then, uh, forty through fifty-five, this middle section, sometimes called Deutero or Second Isaiah.

Then some even say from fifty-five to, to sixty-six, Trito or Third Isaiah.

I'll leave that to the Bible scholars.